Language experts push multilingualism to promote 'identity'

Commission President José Manuel Barroso told a Berlin conference in November 2006: "Together, let us defend multilingualism, one of the inviolable principles of European integration, and a better understanding between language communities. Let us encourage language learning and the translation of works of European literature, which would enrich us all."

Renowned writer, broadcaster and linguistics expert David Crystal says: "As we look around the world, we see that multilingualism is the default human condition, a principle that has been obscured in parts of Europe as a consequence of colonial history. We urgently need to reassert it, and to implement it in practical ways, for, in the modern world, monolingualism is not a strength but a handicap." 

Dr Alison Phipps, from the UK's University of Glasgow, said that she was "concerned to address the question of how it is that people of different languages and cultures encounter each other and how the contexts of their everyday encounters shape these encounters".